


The Issue(s) With Polite Society

by fightthefry



Series: Various Harry Potter Stories [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1930's London, Canon Divergent, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Time Travel, grey! Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24203158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightthefry/pseuds/fightthefry
Summary: A broken connection may leave a different one in its place since, after all, the soul yearns for companionship.But when the prophecy is completed and Voldemort is finally dead, Harry Potter finds himself craving and searching for somewhere to fit in: a place in the world where he’s truly needed. And when the only constant and purpose you've ever known is gone, the only way to move forwards is to go backwards.
Series: Various Harry Potter Stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1496477
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

It was about ten weeks after the famed Battle of Hogwarts that Harry Potter decided that he was done.

Ten weeks. That’s all it took. He was a little disappointed with himself really.

The initial cleanup had distracted him at first, an amalgamation of work akin to chores that kept his hands busy and his mind far from idle. His friends, those that survived the onslaught those many days prior, were by him, side by side, as they were in the battle. Brooms whisked away the debris from the floor and wands were waved across the vast demolition that plagued the east of the castle. He could hardly go a few minutes without coming across another grateful witch or wizard, his mind blank as they shook his hands vigorously, spluttering and bowing to him.

He could hardly go a few hours without coming across the remains of yet another of the lost.

Hermione and Ron were amazing, of course they were, but their countless ventures into the Room of Requirement – alone – and shared cradling of each other’s hands only sought to prove his worries, his doubts. Paranoia enveloped the overworked confines of his mind day by day.

And so, it was said, those ten weeks later, that Harry Potter simply disappeared one day. No-one knew why. No-one knew how.

It was rumoured that, as he stood over the remains of Voldemort’s yew wand in the basement of the Ministry, the memory of his fight became too much, and the killing curse from all those years ago finally claimed its’ victim.

Those who knew of his story wondered whether he simply succumbed to the sudden absence of the horcrux, simply keeling over at the emptiness of his mind.

Those who knew Harry as ‘just Harry’, rather than the renowned Boy-Who-Lived, were just as confused as the rest of the population – if not more so. They knew in their hearts that Harry would never willingly leave them, but their heads wondered upon the lack of a body, lack of evidence, of motive, and upon his miraculous ability to bounce back from death, and simply came to the conclusion that the Wizarding World was no longer in need of a saviour.

There would always be some that would crave his return. But with the Dark Lord vanquished to a pit further than hell, and with the door to the Death Eater movement swinging nearly closed, people knew that Wizarding Society was simply fine without him.

Harry Potter was not needed anymore.

And so, he left.

-

-

-

The pieces of the Dark Lord’s wand, locked inside a display case and bound with paranoid lashings of a binding curse, were surprisingly… anticlimactic, Harry mused. Despite the fragmented tendrils of power that yearned for reunion with his brother wand, it was simply… broken. There was nothing behind it anymore.

The walls of the Ministry were despairingly far apart, like the stone itself feared the only remaining remnant of Voldemort. The ceiling was higher than one would think and gave all the feelings of safety of a frayed rope. It was a dome, empty and alone, and abandoned by society as the people of the Wizarding World tried desperately to move on.

Everyone except the saviour of the Wizarding World. He was still stuck right in place, bound as if by invisible and ancient cords to the memory of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

The vision of Lord Voldemort’s broken body, left behind in the blinding white of Kings Cross Station, haunted him, plaguing his every thought, and despite the rational debates that pounded away at all the insecure ramblings of his brain, Harry found himself missing the fight. Missing the action.

Harry Potter had been complaining of his fame for all the time that he knew of it. But with the fame came a purpose, something that, without Voldemort, he lacked severely.

So, in a bizarre turn of events, Harry Potter found himself before the only remaining life of Voldemort, twisting a golden cord between his fingers. He hummed to himself.

“Harry?”

He had been ignoring the ghosts of his parents for quite some time now. They had been there, continuously, since the beginning of the end, and had rigorously supported his every move, so long as it was Gryffindor. Courage. Bravery. Pride. Considering this, they did not understand why he was running. Escaping. They only tried to change him, his decisions as they brewed over the many days and nights. They did not agree with him, but then again, who did?

“Harry please darling, speak to us. Don’t do this.”

He spun the golden cord once again, leading the countless beads across his fingertips. They fell through with ease.

“Harry,” James Potter pleaded, messy hair invading the side of his vision, “Son, please.”

It was comical really, that the Master of Death couldn’t control his dead.

“Harry James Potter!” A motherly voice shouted, desperation breaking the strong tenure of Lily Potter’s voice.

Perhaps for the last time, and nearly for the first, Harry turned around to face his parents.

“Please Harry,” Lily covered her face with her hands, the long jumper that she wore all those many years ago, that cold Halloween night, covering her fingertips. She was young, and she looked it, tears sparkling in her eyes, “you have a life here. You’ve _fought_ for this life. Don’t throw it away.”

The gold beads were no longer cold, warmed by the constant turning of his fingertips.

“Do I?” He said, almost emotionless, staring into the swirling magics that surrounded the white shards in front of him.

He knew, intrinsically, that he was being unfair. He knew that, by the smell of the gin on his breath, he probably wasn’t thinking straight. But he couldn’t care less. Not now.

The gold beads started to spark in his hands, the friction heating up the rough skin of his fingers.

He started to turn. One, two…

The yells of his parents were drowned out by the resigned ringing of his ear, blocking out the rest of the world as his heart beat loudly, bounding through his skin.

“If all goes well, I’ll get you back,” Harry whispered, mainly to himself.

Then there was silence and empty nothingness, the only evidence of someone having been there at all being the faded ghost of a gold plume in the shape of a young, tearful man, rivalled only by the faint ticking sound that reverberated, nearly silently, throughout the cold, Ministry room.

-

-

-

London, it seemed, was timeless, the streets as busy and packed in the 30’s as they were in the 90’s. Crowds of bustling people flocked together on the thin paths beside the road, narrowly avoiding the leaning buses that flung themselves around the corners as they looked down onto their newspaper. Gaggles of women rushed home in Sunday best, hurrying their wide-eyed children along past the sweet shops and the toymakers.

All of these people, not through apathy but through ignorance, did not spare Harry Potter a second glance.

Thankfully, and completely unexpectedly, Harry Potter did not reappear in the Ministry of Magic, but before the ever-recognizable silhouette of Harrods, the windows glinting in the midday sun as shoppers passed in and out of the gold-lined doors. He looked out of place, of course he did, in his wizards’ cloak and baggy jeans, brandishing his wand as if ready to fight – which would be entirely appropriate, had he arrived surrounded by twenty-odd Ministry officials.

But this was London, and even amongst the high-end customers of the glitzy and gold, Harry was certainly not the oddest thing they’d ever seen.

However, he would stand out even less in Diagon Alley, he bet.

Years and years of having to find his way - getting lost through the back alleys and arriving at some fairly sketchy pubs – to the Leaky Cauldron caused the route to hardwire itself into his brain. It was probably a game, he mused, to Uncle Vernon: drop the kid in different locations and hope that he would get lost and found by someone else. Never worked though.

The Leaky Cauldron stood tall in front of him, as desolate as ever, with a throng of colourfully dressed patrons drinking large mugs of some sort of – what seemed to be violently frothing – alcohol. Of course, it wasn’t called the Leaky Cauldron from the outside, and the everyday throng of muggles that passed by the thousands would only see drunk customers of the nearest pub, the name unimportant and entirely forgettable, and avoid them with a wide birth.

The familiarity of it was a blessing and a curse, a sign that everything was both the same and not. The confusion however, now that was nostalgic; the sense of not having a clue about anything.

The sweet smell of intoxication floated through the bar, interspersing with the magic and the burning of the fireplace like they were born to mingle with one another. Person after person passed by him, reaching for another flagon, and he squeezed through the touching shoulders like a piece of paper, until the brick wall that he so desperately tried to reach came into view.

He tapped each individual part, watching the blocks flex inwards and outwards until a doorway started to form, opening up into an alley that Harry would know anywhere.

Diagon Alley, the first place he ever visited that truly felt like some semblance of home. Of belonging.

And it looked exactly the same, he chuckled. Wizarding society must not have moved on that much in the last 60 odd years.

A sign hung upwards almost directly in front of him: _‘1933 Elections; Vote Fawley’._

  1. That was a little earlier than he had hoped; Harry had been aiming, ideally, for ’39, but 6 years wasn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things – he had come from ’98, after all.



Although, coming without knowing the political state might have been a little bit of a stupid move – Fawley, as he had researched, died in 1939, causing another election to take place and one of the most famous socialist (if socialism even existed as a concept in 1940-ish Wizarding Britain) Minister, Spencer-Moon, to start his term. He never thought that he would have to research the past of the _past_. He probably should have, but hindsight’s a bitch.

As he wandered – more like squeezed – down the lengthy alley, Harry stroked his chin slightly, the ever-present chill of the London summer air activating the slight stubble of his face to stand on end. He looked to Flourish and Blotts and saw only a see of red and the flash of several cameras. Fortescue’s Icecream, now a nameless pawn shop, was littered with the ghosts of breathless jokes and hearty laughter. Memories were all one had when your life didn’t technically exist anymore. Anything and everything he had done was all for naught and could all be undone in one swift swoop.

The idea was exhilaratingly frightening. But he had a clean slate.

Harry Potter was finally in a place where nobody, _nobody,_ knew his name.

The idea reinvigorated him. His jaw ached almost as much as the corners of his eyes.

He stepped inside the magical entrance to the Leaky Cauldron, the stairs that led up to the many rooms of the inn covered in a much thicker layer of dust than his time, and wrapped his cloak further around his shoulders – shielding his faded Woolworths t-shirt. Nobody looked at him.

“Excuse me,” he ventured, moving to a man who was waving his wand at several cleaning cloths, “who would I speak to about getting a room?”

The man, to Harry’s confusion, snorted. “and wh’ on God’s green earth woul’ someone like you wan’ with a place like this?”

It took Harry a second, before the man’s cockney accent kickstarted some semblance of intelligence within his brain – deep set as it may have been.

“Running away,” he explained, somewhat truthfully, to the man, who looked him up and down like he was encrusted with diamonds. To be fair to him, the semi-expensive fabric of his cloak probably seemed like it belonged to royalty, especially in a time like this.

The man nodded though, still eying Harry like a piece of prime meat, and thrust a rusted key into his hand.

“3 sickles for the firs’ night, 1 and 8 knuts for e’vry followin’ night. Room five.”

Harry dug out the money from his pocket. It was taken before his hand was even fully out.

“Right,” he said, to no one in particular, “room five.”

He turned around and, watching the dust fly into the air, began to ascend the staircase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a new story - not at all connected to the old ones - and is NOT romantically based at all. Thought I'd get that out at the beginning.
> 
> To answer the questions I'm sure that I'll get, I made it so that Harry can still see his parents even after dropping the resurrection stone, since he's technically the Master of Death (although that won't be such a huge plot point). And yes, I kept it vague on purpose.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comment and I'll answer, I love speaking to all of you!


	2. Chapter 2

Money, though he didn’t understand it all that much, was the basis of most things in Wizarding society, even more so than in the muggle world. As Harry Potter, he had had access to a plethora of methods of accessing capital – Gringotts, admirers (though he would never utilize them), his various estates – and had no issue spending it, since he had almost no concept of frugality at 11-years of age. After all, who did?

Yet now, where the name Potter was inaccessible, Harry found himself near destitute, and lacking in any standing in society whatsoever. He had taken to traversing the streets, looking in on various wizarding properties that were for sale. However, as he quickly found out, the exchange rate between his time and the ‘30’s would not help him all too much.

Perhaps it was the upcoming rise of Grindelwald, or the fact that pureblood supremacy reigned more supreme than ever before, but Harry found himself unable to afford even the vaguest of properties – a flat in Monument Alley, for example, had an infestation of seemingly immoveable doxies, yet he had only been able to haggle the deposit down to 150 galleons.

In every sense of the term, Harry Potter was broke and in desperate need of some cash.

This led him, of course, to Gringotts Wizarding Bank.

The large building was as bent as it was in his time, chunks taken out of the side of it as if bitten off – and considering the pets that they kept in the basement, he didn’t doubt it – and large pillars which leaned in no conceivable pattern with one another. The doors were open and guarded by two unusually large goblins, both wielding various weapons upon their person, which eyed with suspicion every wizard and witch that passed in and out of the entrance-way.

Cradled in his cloak – the day had taken quite the chill – and absent-mindedly itching his arm, which was clad in a cheap, scratchy shirt that had been left by the previous owner of his room at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry swept through the doors as quickly as everyone else, avoiding eye-contact with the guard-goblins as much as he possibly could.

That didn’t stop them from looking curiously at him, though.

The inside of Gringotts was more or less the same as it was in his time, although he would argue it was far more glamorous, if that was even possible. Tall walls adorned in intricate patterns of gold let up into a domed ceiling, decorated in a mosaic depicting several trades and famous goblin events throughout history – not that Harry could have named them. The floor was shined to perfection, the marble encrusted logo of the bank glinting in response to the thousands of diamond-lights which hung in a chandelier from the roof, candles floating lackadaisically on every wall.

In lines of fourty or so, goblins watched over towering piles of paperwork, stamping receipts and scratching signatures upon contracts. They paid him no mind.

“Next!” A voice called from the front of the queue – a queue which he had not been all too aware that he was standing in – and Harry jumped forwards, hands in pockets, and strained his neck up at the desk in front of him.

“Name and purpose?”

“Uh, Harry Evans,” he lied spectacularly – at least he thought so – as he straightened his back to mirror Hermione’s mannerisms the last time he had visited Gringotts, “I would like to open a vault, please.”

The goblin still didn’t look at him. “Blood-status?”

“Muggleborn.”

He had thought it best not to be a half-blood. It would have made his life so much easier, but he couldn’t run the risk of a nosy pureblood asking too many awkward questions about a past which didn’t exist, at least not yet. As much as he hated to admit it, he had to reluctantly agree; no-one paid muggleborns any mind.

“Mister Evans, are you aware that we require a fee to open a vault?” The goblin asked, almost condescendingly, to him, peering at him slightly over half-mooned glasses that reminded him almost painfully of Dumbledore.

“Uh no I didn’t,” Harry admitted, and he was telling the truth, although his shock came from somewhere else. He was under the impression that goblins didn’t care too much for wizarding customs such as blood-status.

Although, in a time where the middle-class was near non-existent, and the upper-class were few and far between, Harry had to concede that their interest made sense. Goblins liked gold, after all, and not many people – muggles especially – had gold. There were significantly less halfbloods here, and mostly all purebloods sauntered about their well-endowed estates, flinging money at the peasants which surrounded them.

Okay, that may have been a slight exaggeration of the fact, but the hyperbole was almost appropriate considering his most potent interaction with pureblooded culture would have to be Draco Malfoy.

“The fee is 10 galleons, which is equal to approximately 15/- in muggle currency. We require an upfront fee.”

15 shillings seemed quite a low amount of money, but he rationed that the exchange rate was rather forgiving to a time traveller. Doing the maths in his head – he had been forced to memorise the conversation between shillings to pounds in primary school – it came to be around 75 pence: less than a pound. He almost smiled to himself. Maybe he would be able to afford some things after all, if not through wizarding currency originally, but through the exchange into it.

Harry dug some pennies from his pocket and laid them on the small pot that had been extended in front of him.

The goblin took the money, before raising an eyebrow at him.

“This is money that I have ever seen before, Mister Evans, if it is even considered legal tender,” the goblin observed, turning the pound over in his fingers.

Harry thanked Hermione in his head before answering.

“I read somewhere that you have a way of testing the validity of money. If you checked, I think you’ll find that it’s legitimate, and valued at 20 shillings.”

Calling his bluff, the goblin handed the pound coin to his assistant and carefully read the slip of parchment that was handed back to him almost instantly.

“It seems that you are correct,” the goblin relinquished sceptically, eyeing Harry – now interested - over the top of his glasses, “I apologise. I assume this is the money that you would like to exchange into your Gringotts vault?”

Harry nodded, fishing his wallet out from his pocket. He took out several twenty-pound notes, crinkled as they were, and laid them in the pot, along with several galleons. The money was taken reverently between wrinkled fingertips; the goblin looked at them with curiosity before another of his colleagues whisked them away.

Receiving yet another slip of paper, the goblin cleared his throat, “The balance in your vault, number 341, is 2429 Galleons, 6 Sickles and 5 Knuts. Would you like a print-out of your worth?”

‘Your worth’. Harry almost snorted; money really was the most important thing, wasn’t it?

“That won’t be necessary,” he reassured, before pausing slightly, “can I take out a cheque for 300 galleons?”

The goblin nodded and almost instantly a slip of paper was thrust into his hands.

Bidding the creatures farewell, Harry exited the bank as quickly as he arrived, folding the cheque carefully into his pocket – thanking to Merlin that they were charmed to never lose anything within them – and glancing up at the ever-darkening sky.

“Tomorrow,” Harry murmured to himself, before turning the corner back to the Leaky Cauldron.

-

-

-

“Do you have any job experience?” A portly witch sniffed, looking him up and down with obvious disdain.

“With selling newspapers?” Harry asked disbelievingly. Since when were there requirements? He had gotten a paper-round when he was eight!

“Uh, no, I can’t say that I do.”

It had been only a week, and Harry was already bored. It was becoming a pattern really, wasn’t it?

“You will be a representative of our brand, and Mr. Fawley wants only the best to be associated with his campaign. We can’t just have anyone running around can we?” She laughed lightly – Harry was sure at his expense – and gazed at him curiously. “What did you say your name was?”

He almost sighed. Almost. This would be the fourth time he would say his name, in a span of nearly ten minutes, “Harry Evans.”

The woman hummed condescendingly, somehow looking down at him when she was half a foot shorter than him. It was a skill that, Harry wondered, was probably well-perfected over a long period of time.

Her hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, with stray strands flying about the sides of her ears. It gave her sort of a greased look, or at least it would if she weren’t so well presented in other areas. Her dress was long and semi-expensive, an ashen burgundy in colour, with trimmings of lace bunched around the sleeves. As stated previously, she was short. Noticeably shorter than Harry, who wasn’t exactly the tallest of fellows – quite the opposite in fact – and so it was almost disconcerting to have such a good and intimate view of the top of her head.

Everything about her read pretentious and middle-class; she knew that she was better than you. But, considering she worked in a small Daily Prophet Office, dangerously close to Knockturn Alley, her opinions were unlikely to be founded on actual evidence.

“Hourly pay is 2 sickles, 21 knuts. No sick pay, three days holiday. You’ll start at 6am, go until midday, 6 days a week – Saturdays off. Any questions?”

Harry gaped at her, vaguely aware of the door opening and closing behind him. “I got the job?”

“Be here, on time, tomorrow morning, or I’ll dock your pay. Now please, move. You’re blocking the door.”


	3. Chapter Three

The woman was right, although there was scarcely any room for interpretation in her words, which made it all the more imperative that he listened to her. Getting pay docked wasn’t necessarily a concern of his, however getting fired – on the first day as well! – was not what he wanted to do. Something told him that the whispers in the shadows of the alley were very curious about him. The girls twittered and the boys slid their eyes sideways at him, not quite subtle but secretive enough to claim deniability against anything that might befall him. The streets were scary, and for the first time Harry was thankful that his Aunt Petunia had lived where she did, and that he – although unfortunate in many, many other ways – lived with her.

But he was a part of the streets now, his cap dirtied with the smoke that floated on the border of Diagon and muggle London, drifting as a viscous fog from the factories that loomed forever as a backdrop to the London skyline – scarce to be seen through the grey, even on the brightest of nights. His outer coat, brought new and newly old, flapped as he walked. It was much too big for him. It made him look a lot smaller, a lot weaker, than he actually he was.

Or maybe he was that small. He didn’t know.

The people on the streets were not as wildly diverse as they were in the modern day, but not in the way you would expect. Men walked with men, women walked with women. Sometimes, a men would grasp his wife – for they must have been married – by the hand, walking in silence as she peered surreptitiously in the windows of the passing shops. Sometimes children would run, never walk, past, screaming and playing as they went, but they were few and far between. The children of higher London weren’t truly children, with their Sunday best tied up to their necks and their shoes freshly scrubbed and shined. They were short men, and petite women, nothing more.

It didn’t take a keen eye to pick out the magic in the crowds. In a sea of grey and brown, he was the man with a purple hat. Among the long flowing frocks, she was the only one with a briefcase. They weren’t hard to spot, and he could feel the energy fizz around them as they picked their edition of the Daily Prophet out of his waiting hands. They smiled and tipped their heads at him, a secret smile for secret people.

They had placed him in a fairly good neighbourhood, a busy street, which seemed to be quite adventurous considering his ineptitude. Harry stifled a laugh when he rationed that this meant that the Prophet’s standards probably weren’t as high as they claimed, considering he was on the front lines, so to speak.

Maybe it was calculative, considering how he was dressed. The upper-middle class of London looked at him with barely concealed distaste, shuffling past him quite quickly as if he were a fleck of dirt that they didn’t want to stain their clothes. Everyone ignored the Prophet’s pin which was attached quite obviously to his breast. Everyone but a few.

It was only after a couple of hours, when the sun had risen fully and the heat of the day was creeping over the building as a many dozen spiders, that he got bored. Even with the throng of newcomers, mostly men, on their way to earn their keep, there was no one to buy his papers and free his arms. The Ministry started work at 7 O’clock, and only the stragglers remained.

His shift was another three hours, and the wizarding population of Britain had dwindled to one every full turn of the clock. Harry heard the chimes of Big Ben in the distance. One. Two. Three. Four. Five…

His arms were heavier still, even with the lighter load, and the sun was beating onto the skin of his neck. Now, not hidden by the shadow of his corner, the people of London looked at him with new disgust, glaring at the hue of his skin as if he were a personal affront to them. Even the children, the true children of London – dressed in their thrice-turned garb and holed-shoes – stared Harry up and down with wide eyes before their friends dragged them off to the sweet shop about the corner, though they were worlds better than the others, who were blinded by golden shades and pockets of privilege.

Six. Seven. Eight. Nine…

Harry was tired, way too tired, of the public eye.

He left.

The papers, hidden from muggles, were thrust into the arm of a particularly stocky wizard – ‘Medical emergency mate, nothing to help it’ – and ran off around the corner.

The corner, although as plain and busy as the one before him, was blessed with a new sight. There was a sweet shop, teeming with children, on the opposite side of the street, its sign not neon or flashing as he was used to, but innocently placed among the chaos of rush hour so that any passing child would be automatically dragged in with the promise of sugar in a time brimming for war – not that they’d know that yet, being young and free from the burden of his knowledge.

Harry, still a child in his own right he supposed, was more intuitive to its contents. In the same way that childhood wonder had caused the entire trolley of sweets to land on his lap on that first train to Hogwarts, his smile widened from nothing and he pushed towards the packed shop.

The children, most of them dressed for school, some of them not, were all impossibly young, their faces wide with stuffed mouths and voices loud and uncaring. The world, it’s weight only shown in the pull of their cheeks and the edge of their ribs, had not fully claimed them yet. They were children, real children, and they were free. They did not fear the shadows, because they were the shadows – fast and small and pliable, they were the messengers of London’s East End, gathered in a small shop, run by one of their own – though old and not blind to the world – and were sheltered from scorn and hate and judgement. It was only them.

And, Harry was truly thankful, they did not seem to care so much for the colour of his skin, but more for his age and for the shiny pin woven through the rough texture of his shirt. Magpies, he thought, and smiled.

London, though less so in his time, had always been split up into nice little sections – you had the East End, and you had Mayfair, for example – as to wall the poor onto their own little island and abandon them there. It was a rare sight, for a sweet shop so obviously cockney, to be sat on the road besides a tailor and a high-end cobbler, but it was a welcome sight nonetheless.

Harry breathed, finally, and took a pew on the step of the shop, waving at the passers-by, protected from the sun by the shade of the shadows that chattered chaotically inside.

It was peaceful, if only for a few moments.

Then time stopped.


End file.
